For example, online shopping isn’t a leisurely, recreational pursuit for most consumers. Nearly half go to a specific site with a specific product in mind and purchase it, says the study. And far from being put off by personalized ads, the majority of consumers are comfortable receiving them on PCs, mobile devices, and social sites—and they’re much more likely to act on them, too.

Some interesting habits of online consumers:

58% put an item in their shopping cart only when they’re planning to buy it

70% are comfortable receiving ads and content specifically targeted to them

52% are more likely to act on a targeted PC ad versus 26% for non-targeted ads

67% are more likely to act on a targeted mobile coupon vs 35% for non-targeted coupons

According to a recent presentation on web metrics by Google, the world’s digital habits have dramatically changed in the past 3 years. In 2009, the internet boasted a healthy 1.5 billion users, and just last year, this figure topped out at over 2.3 billion. That’s a 53% increase in just a few short years. Buying habits have also continued to shift. In 2009, when a customer arrived at a brick and mortar store, 70% of their purchasing decisions were already made. Last year, that figure bumped up to 90%.

We live in a multi-channel, multi-screen world, and the sheer variety and volume of paths and choices a customer has to make results in a complicated challenge for marketers. Deciphering how and where your audience is making key decisions continues to be a gigantic hurdle for businesses hoping to understand the true meaning of their metrics.

Amazon & Kiva Systems

Amazon: The world’s largest online retailer started as a web based book store, but soon ballooned out into music, retail goods, apparel and a wealth of other products. It was founded in Seattle, Washington in 1994 and now delivers around the world.

Kiva Systems: A warehouse robotics company, Kiva Systems produces robots that take the legwork out of managing stock.

Why the merger will work: Amazon are hoping to improve their margins by reducing spending on warehouse processing. Having an automated warehouse system will hopefully make the business more efficient. And those orange robots are pretty nifty. Apart from a Terminator-esque Rise of the Machines, what could go wrong?

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eCommerce websites are changing the way people shop. Shopping on online stores has many advantages: You get to save time and effort; you can easily compare different brands and vendors; not to mention that in many cases it will save you some money as well. But what started as a practical innovation is now becoming a huge market with intense competition.

Online stores are no longer considered attractive only for offering a more comfortable alternative to the shopping mall. They need to really grab clients’ attention with an outstanding design and a quality shopping experience.

In the past few months, we implemented many improvements and new features to our eCommerce platform, including the amazing Shopify app. Wix users now have more options than ever to create a stunning online store that really sells.

Want to see it with your own eyes? Have a look at these amazing eCommerce websites, all built by Wix users using the HTML5 website builder. Get inspired by these awesome online stores and then check out our eCommerce templates to get your own store running!

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When you create an online shop to start selling online, you want your store to be perfect. It needs to display your products in the most beautiful way, to be simple, user-friendly, maintain a high sales and retention rate. Shopify delivers all these, big time.
The new Shopify app means fantastic news for online store owners: you can now enjoy the integration between Wix’ stunning layouts and Shopify’s most advanced eCommerce platform.

Let’s see just how good this gets:

Ease of Use

With a simple click, you can add the Shopify app to your Wix HTML5 website. Customizing and editing is an intuitive and easy process. Just add your products with images, titles and descriptions and you’re good to go.

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Building an eCommerce website may sound like a difficult task, but it can actually be quite simple and intuitive. If you have the right tools, you can have your online shop up and running in no time! And Wix has all the tools you need for the job.

Here’s a simple guide on how to create an eCommerce website, the easy way.

Step #1: Research

Before you launch your online shop, make sure you look around on the net and see what kind of competition you’re dealing with. What are similar stores doing right and what are they doing wrong? It will help you understand how your business can stand out, what are your competitors’ weak spots and what are their advantages.

Step #2: Choosing a Template

Wix has many eCommerce templates for you to choose from – both in HTML5 or Flash. When you look for the perfect template for your website, consider these points:

Style: Are you looking for a vintage look? A minimalist design to match your products? A professional cut maybe? Choose the template that has the closest style to what you have in mind.

Colors: If your brand already has distinct colors, go with a template that matches or compliments these colors.

Layout: Which template can display your products in the most appealing way? Would you like the homepage to be the store itself? Do you need a layout that has space for deals and discounts? How do you want the navigation menu to look like? Different templates have different layouts and you can choose the best one for you!

Step #3: Editing & Customizing

The best part about working with a Wix eCommerce template is that it is so easy to customize. Simply click on all elements in the Wix editor to edit them. You can change the texts, background image, fonts, contact information and more.

Of course, the most important part is customizing the store itself. As store manager you can:

Add several images for each product

Set displayed currency and weight units

Add a choice of colors and sizes

Write a full product description (overview and details)

Manage inventory and available stock

Add ribbons and badges for special announcements (sale, new, out of stock)

Every day there is a new headline about mobile payments focused on using a mobile phone to pay at retail locations. Paypal, Google and other industry giants are racing to provide new in-store mobile payment solutions. Large merchants, such as Wal-mart and Target have contemplated their own mobile payment solutions. The debate about whether NFC will be the preferred technology to enable mobile payments rages. However, despite all this press and efforts by industry giants, there is stunningly little traction to use a mobile device to pay at retail locations. This is largely because the solutions offered by industry giants thus far don’t solve a meaningful problem in the daily lives of consumers or merchants. Few things in life are easier for consumers than swiping a credit card at checkout and in-store payment systems are as easy and ubiquitous as dial-tone for merchants.

However, There is a massive mobile commerce opportunity that is a severe pain point for both consumers and merchants, but large industry players are failing to meaningfully address it. That opportunity is e-commerce on the mobile device or m-commerce. M-commerce is ramping up, proving that consumers not only like to shop via their mobile device, but also will purchase. However, the numbers also show that there’s significant room for improvement in the mobile device purchasing experience – mainly through optimizing the shopping and payment processes for consumers.

Online holiday shopping in 2011 showed substantial growth in mobile shopping activity, with both traffic and sales on mobile devices more than doubling their volume over the same period a year earlier, according to research from IBM. During the holiday shopping season, 14.6 percent of all online sessions on a retailer’s site were initiated from a mobile device (up from 5.6 percent the year before), and sales from mobile devices reached 11 percent versus 5.5 percent in December 2010. Clearly, more consumers are becoming comfortable shopping and buying from retailer web sites using their smartphones. Seguir leyendo “Mobile payments | 3wƒactory.com.ar”→

It’s no secret that the Internet loves Pinterest. Now, most users are even spending more time, on average, pinning than they are on hanging out on Facebook. Here’s what you need to know about Pinterest user demographics.

With an average of 1.36 million users daily, the social photo pinboard has taken the web by storm, and top online retailers are following suit. Who are these feverish pinners? According to full service agency Modea, the majority are female mothers — 28 percent have a household income of $100k+.

The world of online sales, whether of products or services, can be daunting at first; the options seem confusing and the information conflicted. Yet as the designer or developer of an online store, you will need to guide your client through the maze of choices in order to get it up and running.

I have developed many e-commerce websites during my career as a Web developer. I’ve used and modified off-the-shelf software and have also developed custom solutions — so I know from experience that there are a number of important questions to answer before presenting possible solutions to a client. Getting all the pertinent information up front is vital if such a project is to run smoothly, and it can save you from delays during the process. It can also help you advise the client on whether they need a full custom cart or an open-source or off-the-shelf product.

This article responds to some questions you should be asking of your client before putting together a proposal for the development of an e-commerce website. I’ll explain the most important things to think about in terms of taking payments and credit card security. It should give you enough information to be able to guide your client and to look up more detailed information about the aspects that apply to your particular situation.

What this article doesn’t cover is the design and user experience side of creating an e-commerce website, because gathering this information would normally occur alongside the designing and branding of the website.

What You Need To Know

It is really tempting to select a solution based on something you have used before or perhaps after asking around to see what others recommend. But you can get stuck in a rut this way. Every online business has different needs, so one solution is unlikely to fit all. Before writing any code or trying an off-the-shelf package, you need to ask yourself or your client a few questions:

What are you selling?

What shopping functionality should you offer?

How will you take payment?

How will items be delivered?

What reporting and other functionalities are required?

What Are You Selling?

Your online store may be selling physical products that are shipped by the postal service or a courier to the customer after a completed purchase. Or it might be selling products that are delivered electronically, such as e-book downloads, MP3 music or software. Donations and subscriptions are types of transactions to consider as well.

What Shopping Functionality Should You Offer?

Will you be selling a single item, (such as an e-book) or will visitors need to be able to browse and add multiple items to their cart? Are these items associated with distinct options? If you’re selling t-shirts, for example, size and color might be options to include. Are categories needed to make ordering easier? Will a given item be listed in only one category, or could it be found in several? Would the ability to tag items be useful, or the ability to link them to related items (thus allowing the store owner to promote accessories for items that the customer has added to their cart)?

Will there be special offers on the website? Standards ones are “Buy one, get one free,” “20% discount,” “two for one” and “buy item x and get item y at half price.” Setting up these kinds of offers can be quite complex if you are developing a custom system; and if you’re buying an off-the-shelf solution for the store, then you’ll need to know whether it supports them.

The devil (and the budget) is in the details. If your client is expecting particular functionality, find out about it now.

Accounts and Tracking Orders

Part of the user experience could include managing an account and tracking orders. Must users create accounts, or is it optional? Can they track their order and watch it move from “processing” to “shipped”? Account functionality must include basic management functions, such as the ability to reset a forgotten password and to update contact details.

How Will You Take Payment?

You’ll likely need to accept credit and debit card payments from customers. There are a number of options that range in complexity and expense.

PayPal

PayPal is a straightforward way to take payments online. The advantages are that creating a PayPal account is easy, it doesn’t require a credit check, and integration can be as simple as hardcoding a button on your page or as involved as full integration. Google Checkout offers a similar service (and a similarly low barrier to entry), as does Amazon (in the US) through Amazon Payments.

Using A Merchant Account

To accept card payments directly, rather than through services like PayPal, you will need an Internet Merchant Account. This enables you to take credit card payments and process the money to your bank account. If you have an existing merchant account for face-to-face or telephone sales, though, you will not be able to use it for online transactions. Internet transactions are riskier. So, to start trading online, you’ll need to contact your bank. The bank will require that you take payments securely, in most circumstances via a payment service provider (or PSP, sometimes called a payment gateway).

What you should definitely not do is store card details in order to enter them in an offline PDQ later. This would be against the terms of the merchant agreement. So, unless you have written permission from your bank saying you are allowed to do this, and you’re complying with the PCI DSS, just don’t.

The Payment Gateway

The purpose of the payment gateway is to take the card payment of your customer, validate the card number and amount and then pass the payment to your bank securely. You can interact with a payment gateway in two ways:

Via a pay page
The user moves from your website to a secure page on the payment gateway server to enter their details.

Via API integration
The user enters their card details on your website (on a page with a secure certificate installed, running SSL), and those details are then passed to the gateway. Your website acts as the intermediary; the user is not aware of the bank transaction happening, having seen it only via your website.

The advantage of pay page integration is that your website never touches the card details, so you are not liable for the customer’s security. The most significant disadvantage is that you lose some control over the payment process, because the final step requires gathering all the details to pass to the payment server. In addition, you are often unable to customize the payment screen, even if only to upload a logo.

Store owners are often concerned about this break in the user experience: they fear the user will bail before going to the payment page on WorldPay or another server. But transferring your user to a known banking website where they’ll enter their card details might actually give them confidence in the legitimacy of your website. When I deal with an unknown website (perhaps a small retailer) and it asks me to enter my card details, I immediately worry about how it will handle them. Does the website email my card details in clear text? Will the details be stored in a database somewhere by the website? Even if the page has a secure certificate and checks out, I still have no idea what happens to my details after I hit “Submit” on the form. If the final step of checking out takes me to a known PSP page, then I can be confident that my details are safe and the small website isn’t handling them at all. I trust WorldPay with my details far more than I trust Joe Blogg’s Widget Store.

Another useful argument for using a pay page is that, should there be any changes in card payment regulations, these will be handled by the PSP. For example, 3-D Secure (verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode) was instituted recently. It requires that users verify their payment on a page related to their bank before it can be authorized. If you had API integration, you would need to edit your code to ready it for 3-D Secure; whereas on payment page websites, those changes are done by the PSP.

These points have encouraged many website owners to reconsider their reluctance to use a pay page — most realize that being responsible for credit card details is more trouble than it’s worth.

Pay page integration should work with most off-the-shelf software. After payment is made, it typically sends back something that enables your website — which has a script running for this — to identify the user and the transaction and perform any post-purchase processing that may be needed (such as marking an order as “Paid” in the database or giving access to an electronic download).

Today, we are pleased to have Tokokoo provide us with 5 Free Premium WordPress Bangkoo E-Commerce Themes for our readers. Bangkoo is a new WordPress E-Commerce Theme for online furniture, home products stores, fancy gifts stores, and other shops, that sets out a neat and colorful layout. It comes with lots of exciting features that allow you to easily customise it to suit your online business needs.

About Tokokoo

Using their themes you can open your own online store within a few minutes, sell your products easily and interact with your customers better. They’ve spent plenty of time and energy on solving every issue online business owners may experience. In Tokokoo you’ll find WordPress e-commerce themes coded with high usability that you can install and use right away whatever your coding skill.

Besides that, you’ll find WordPress e-commerce themes with features designed to meet your online business’ specific needs. Whether you are selling apps, or gadgets, or apparels, or anything, you’ll find one theme most suitable for your online store.

Premium Bangkoo E-Commerce Theme

Bangkoo is a fascinating new WordPress e-commerce theme for online furniture, home products stores, fancy gifts stores, and other shops, that sets out a neat and colorful layout. Very well-designed, crisp, powerful and looks so rich yet lightweight people will be curious to surf more, it will satisfy your users and save them from confusion when browsing your products.

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Today, we are pleased to have Tokokoo provide us with 5 Free Premium WordPress Bangkoo E-Commerce Themes for our readers. Bangkoo is a new WordPress E-Commerce Theme for online furniture, home products stores, fancy gifts stores, and other shops, that sets out a neat and colorful layout. It comes with lots of exciting features that allow you to easily customise it to suit your online business needs.

About Tokokoo

Tokokoo is a one-stop shop where you can browse and download their collection of WordPress e-commerce themes. All for premium and free.

Using their themes you can open your own online store within a few minutes, sell your products easily and interact with your customers better. They’ve spent plenty of time and energy on solving every issue online business owners may experience. In Tokokoo you’ll find WordPress e-commerce themes coded with high usability that you can install and use right away whatever your coding skill.

Besides that, you’ll find WordPress e-commerce themes with features designed to meet your online business’ specific needs. Whether you are selling apps, or gadgets, or apparels, or anything, you’ll find one theme most suitable for your online store.

Premium Bangkoo E-Commerce Theme

Bangkoo is a fascinating new WordPress e-commerce theme for online furniture, home products stores, fancy gifts stores, and other shops, that sets out a neat and colorful layout. Very well-designed, crisp, powerful and looks so rich yet lightweight people will be curious to surf more, it will satisfy your users and save them from confusion when browsing your products.

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With the internet being used more and more by your average consumer, you may be wanting to start your own online shop so you can unleash your products to all those potential customers. I’m sure you know that there are countless ways to do just this, but here I’m going to talk specifically about e-commerce plugins for WordPress.

Maybe you’ve heard about the odd plugin that allows you to sell products from your WordPress blog, but you might not know exactly what they are. To help you on your way to selling your products, I’m going to tell you about the five best e-commerce plugins for WordPress.

Ecwid is a free plugin for WordPress. It is a full shopping cart/e-commerce system that is extremely easy to install and even easier to maintain. It’s also customizable so you can have it looking however you like. See their showcase gallery that features live sites that use this WordPress plugin.

How does an online retailer like Zappos prepare for the holiday shopping onslaught? The quirky etailer stays at the top of its game with year-round preparation and continuous iteration on the site’s user experience, features, navigation, product assortment, inventory management and marketing.

One example of such iteration involves customer feedback, which is critical to Zappos’ business. In order to access feedback more directly, Zappos added a “like” button to its site. “We can listen to conversations about us and answer customer questions when they come up,” Jaimee Newberry, senior manager of user experience–visual design, told eMarketer. The feedback played a critical role in retooling the site’s user interface and skin.

“In the user experience world ‘best practice’ becomes a dirty word. We’ve learned by trial and error. We’re huge fans of iteration—throw something out there and listen to what users are saying and marry the users’ needs with the business needs. We get a lot of feedback.” Seguir leyendo “Continuous Iteration Key to Zappos’ Holiday Prep”→

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Are you familiar with the following concept? It is much easier and more cost effective to sell to existing customers than it is to acquirer a new one. Which one would you rather have? Sell 50 items to 5 people or 50 items to 50 people. When you are designing and tweaking your marketing campaigns, be sure to include your current customer base and maximum their profit potential. Here are several ways to do just that, give your customers a reason to come back for more.

Special Discount Offers

I recently purchased something from an online retailer. When I received my package, I noticed there was a discount coupon inside that I could use on my next purchase. I’m a sucker for coupons and many consumers are. It is a great way to encourage and entice your customers to order again. For best results, the coupon should have a higher discount value than what is normally offered to the general public on sites like Retailmenot.com. The discount should also be a one-time use coupon. This will prevent others from sharing it online and reduce the perceived value. Seguir leyendo “Repeat Business: There’s More of You to Love”→